Why are Super Bowl tickets so pricey? It's Da Bears, that's why

By Andrew Segal, Medill News Service
Posted: Thursday, January 25 2007

There's good news and bad news for Bears fans hoping to score tickets to the Super Bowl.

The good? The price of tickets to the Feb. 4 game has fallen since Sunday evening.

The bad? The drop of a few hundred dollars doesn't mean you'll avoid paying an outrageous sum -- and more than you would have last year -- to snag a ticket.

Why are prices so high? Well, it's the Bears.

A single ticket in the upper end zone -- the cheapest available seat -- at Miami's Dolphins Stadium for Super Bowl XLI was going for between $3,000 and $3,500 Wednesday. Seats behind the Bears' sideline near the 50-yard line were selling for more than $10,000.

According to Jennifer Swanson, marketing and communications director for Crystal Lake-based TicketsNow, a division of TNOW Entertainment Group Inc., prices have risen because of the Bears' win.

Swanson said prices for seats behind the Bears' sideline have gone up by thousands of dollars since Sunday. She attributed this to the fact that Bears fans travel and that the team hasn't been to the Super Bowl since 1986.

"I don't know if we would have seen any increase if the Saints had gotten in," Swanson said. "I think the spike was because it was the Bears. We've had more orders from Bears fans than Colts fans."

Max Waisvisz, owner of Chicago ticket broker Gold Coast Tickets Ltd., also credits the rise in prices to the Bears, as well as the fact that Miami is a much more popular winter destination than Detroit, site of last year's Super Bowl.

But the silver lining is that although high-end tickets have gone through the stratosphere, both Waisvisz and Swanson have seen declines in the prices of low-end tickets as the market has calmed down in the days following the Bears' victory.

Waisvisz's cheapest ticket was selling for $3,250 on Wednesday. But that's down from $3,700 Tuesday afternoon and $4,300 on Monday morning. And Waisvisz said the tickets may even go lower as customers balk at the asking price.

"They're finding it too high," he said. "Everyone does not have this disposable income."

Still, he expects to sell all 100 tickets his company will have on hand.

Swanson has also seen sales slow down, and the prices offered by the brokers who use TicketsNow's online marketplace have dropped. Tuesday afternoon, the cheapest ticket on the site was going for $3,750. But by Wednesday morning, it was $2,995.

Likewise, on ticket reseller StubHub.com, the cheapest ticket available as of Wednesday morning was $3,450, down from $3,790 on Tuesday.

"We saw that fan frenzy, the emotional purchase, right after the game," Swanson said. "Now, we're going to see fans planning."

Despite the fact that a pair of tickets on TicketsNow still costs about $6,000 -- plus an additional 10 percent service fee -- Swanson thinks the tickets are actually a pretty good deal.

While high-end prices did jump as expected after the Bears clinched their Super Bowl spot, Swanson said she was surprised the low-end tickets didn't skyrocket.

"I checked right before (Sunday's) game, and on the low end, they were selling for $3,415," she said. "I thought they were going to at least double on the low end after the Bears won."

And there's more good news: Both Swanson and Waisvisz think the market will continue to cool until the weekend. Still, Waisvisz warns those still seeking seats not to wait too long.

"People always think the market will keep dropping as the game gets closer," he said. "But the last three years, we've seen the exact opposite."

Of course, not everyone is going the frugal route. RazorGator Experiences, a division of RazorGator Interactive Group Inc., is the official Super Bowl travel and hospitality consultant for the Bears. The group offers Bears fans a package including a charter flight to Miami, three nights' accommodations, a game ticket, game-day hospitality and more.

The trips start at $5,545 per person for quad occupancy, but with an upgraded game ticket, single occupancy and additional perks, they can run upwards of $10,000.

Julie Reynolds, of RazorGator, said one Chicago-area family has booked six of the top packages.

"They just really wanted to get in on the experience," she said.